STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — Franklin D. Roosevelt is the only president to have visited Staten Island twice while in office during the Advance’s 125 years.

Both trips came near the end of re-election campaigns — in 1936, when he was running for a second term, and in 1940, when he was seeking to become the first president ever to serve more than two terms.

His first visit came in the midst of the Great Depression, which FDR was battling with an unprecedented policy of government intervention in the economy. The president’s innovations had proved popular with millions who suffered the burden of the country’s worst economic disaster.

That popularity was evident on Oct. 27, 1936, when the president passed through the Island on his way to campaign stops in other boroughs. His motorcade crossed the Bayonne Bridge and passed through the North Shore before heading across the Harbor by ferry.

Borough President Joseph Palma proclaimed a public holiday for the occasion and let Borough Hall employees out of work early so they could view FDR’s motorcade.

The borough’s school children were given the day off, at the suggestion of Palma and with the assent of Ellsworth B. Buck, Staten Island’s member of the city Board of Education.

RETURN VISIT

Four years later — to the day, in fact — FDR paid his second visit to the Island, again as both president and candidate. His route was also the same — a motorcade over the Bayonne Bridge and a ride through the North Shore streets to a waiting ferry for a trip to Brooklyn.

The presidential entourage, consisting of 75 to 100 cars along with 60 motorcyle police and a score of squad cars, passed through the flag-lined streets and cheering crowds along Forest Avenue, Victory Boulevard and Bay Street in mid-morning.

Among the politicians who traveled with the president during his half-hour visit were Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia and William Fetherston, the Island’s Democratic county chairman at the time.

Also on hand was William E. O’Donnell, chairman of the Richmond County Independent Voters Committee for Roosevelt and Wallace. (Henry Wallace was FDR’s running mate.)

For a week in 1952, Staten Island was the center of that year’s hotly contested presidential campaign.

Within seven days of each other, Democratic Vice President Alben Barkley and Republican presidential candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower visited the borough as part of their campaign tours.

Barkley came first on Oct. 22. to speak at a luncheon in the old Meurot Club in St. George. Barkley wasn’t campaigning for himself (he and incumbent President Harry S. Truman had decided not to run for re-election in 1952), but for Gov. Adlai Stevenson of Illinois, the party’s presidential nominee.

The Kentucky resident was thought to be too old at 74 to be much help during the campaign, but news reports from the campaign indicate that he was a hearty campaigner.

Barkley, introduced to the crowd by County Chairman Jeremiah Sullivan, defended Truman’s position on the Korean War, which came under attack from Eisenhower, the hero of World War II.

BARKLEY BARKS He also spoke out against the Republican theme that the country needed a change after 20 years of Democratic presidents.

“I have no patience with anyone who would turn out our administration simply because they want change,” he said to a crowd of about 300.

He told questioners that he thought the campaign was going well and that Stevenson “has made great gains.”

The partisan crowd greeted the vice president and his theme warmly. An orchestra played “My Old Kentucky Home” in salute to Barkley’s home state. A member of the press corps traveling with Barkley muttered: “He [Barkley] hears it 15 times a day.”

The Rev. Patrick Kenny of the now-defunct Augustinian Academy overheard the reporter and replied: “We’re very original here on Staten Island.”

A week later, on Oct. 29, Eisenhower trooped to the Island to make a pitch for himself and local Republican candidates, just days before the election.

Ike sailed to the Island aboard the ferryboat Merrell, arriving in St. George in mid-morning. A motorcade took him the short distance to the Hyatt Street side of Borough Hall, where a crowd of about 3,000 people, many chanting “We Want Ike!” was waiting to hear him.

Borough Hall was decked out in bunting and a cold, biting wind blew off the Harbor as Ike prepared to speak. Traffic had been sealed off around Hyatt Street and Stuyvesant Place.

Ike lashed out at the Truman Administration’s foreign policy, saying its mistakes had resulted in the loss of “100 million human souls to communist dictators.”

He blamed the Democrats for inflation, saying that a weekly shopping bill of $10 was now $24.

“Instead of running the government for the service of the people, they [Democrats] have done everything to perpetuate themselves in power,” he said. “We must clean up the mess in Washington.”

Ike was introduced by Gov. Thomas E. Dewey. Republican county chairman Robert Johnson introduced several local candidates to the crowd, led by congressional candidate John Ray.

Several days after his Island speech, Eisenhower was elected president. He went on to win a second term in 1956, again beating Stevenson.